+1
HTPC is all but gone here too - I cannot handle the hassles any longer. The Roku and Samsung apps (on our new QLED TV) are instant on, instant search and instant show time.
The Roku is truly killer as it uses our existing MC DLNA connection and plays all our movies faster and easier than MC can do it.
It finally dawned on me that I am now basically maintaining my MC (media server) install as nothing more that a DLNA access point and have no need to use MC to actually play anything anymore.
The best part of this new reality (for me) is no more family tech support - they simply grab the remote and go.
VP
In my setup, Media Center isn't even doing that. Infuse on the Apple TV pulls directly from the network share. I could run it all from a NAS.
MC is only used for streaming music via JRemote, and not often at that, since there's no convenient search option or voice commands, and I'm not really adding to or maintaining it much any more.
I also recently suffered a large loss of data due to some drive failures, which has pushed me further in this direction. A 4TB Samsung SSD that wasn't even six months old managed to fail in such a way that it took down an entire SATA controller while it was connected to the PC, which corrupted a lot of data.
I said that this is the direction JRiver needed to head in years ago.
Library browsing/management tools are dying; rich search-based navigation via convenient apps is the way forward.
Media Center is still great for DVD playback - nothing matches the quality of madVR combined with MC's VideoClock feature.
But I don't have many DVDs now, and there's no convenient way to integrate that into my home theater setup any more.
I've been thinking about doing something like using screen capture software to 'bake' the output from that into an MKV file I can play on any device without issues for those remaining videos. There may even be a better way that can transcode it with that processing applied directly.